


Falling for My Significant Bother

by brunettebrawler56



Category: Alternate Universe - Fandom, Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Medical, Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, Enemies to Lovers, Eventual Smut, F/M, Slow Burn, Star Wars - Freeform, adored archenemies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2020-02-15
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:13:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 19,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21894931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brunettebrawler56/pseuds/brunettebrawler56
Summary: Doctors Rey and Ben work at the same family practice, where their boss, Luke, is about to retire and hand over the practice to one of them. Pranks, angst, and tricks abound while they compete to both win the practice and avoid falling in love. (Spoiler: they'll fail miserably)*There will be a delay in updates as I'm an essential worker. Story will get finished!*
Relationships: BenRey, Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo, Reylo
Comments: 36
Kudos: 140





	1. Chapter 1

…..REY…..  
Four cases of allergies. Two twisted ankles. One gallbladder attack, and one concerningly large hemorrhoid and all those patients were before noon. It was the usual, run of the mill day at the clinic. Normally, I liked the grind. I reveled in it. Today it was boring me to tears.  


I handed off my completed chart to Maz at the nurse’s station, “Here’s the hemorrhoid patient. How’s it going?”

She barely looked up from her paperwork, “You missed all the fun. I just sent one back to room three that had half his finger half lopped off. The guy was bleeding up the place out here.”

“Damn. You gave that one to Luke?” I glanced over the sign in sheet for any emergencies in the ‘reason for visit’. The head doctor with our small-town traffic usually called dibs on anything fun that would come through the doors.

“Yes,” Maz said, “Luke told me he was leaving a little early for lunch today to go have a meeting. I figured it wouldn’t be more than an hour to stitch up the finger.”

I casually tried to detect anything from her tone. Maz had been the clinic’s head nurse since before the Cantina Band formed and if she didn’t want you to know something, she didn’t let it out. Her brown, freckled face was entirely neutral. 

“Maz, I have to ask—“

“Don’t.”

“But his appointment. Is it with a lawyer or—“

“Rey Skywalker, do you think there’s even a chance that I’d tell you if Luke were to go speak to a lawyer about changing the deed to this place?”

I winced at the full name treatment. It felt exactly like being scolded by a mother. I’d have been more shamed if I’d known mine. I said meekly, “If you’d tell me if he were retiring, I wouldn’t—” 

She gave me an admonishing look over her bottle-thick glasses. “Just for that, I’m going to give you the next patient complaining of  
diarrhea.”

I pouted out my bottom lip. “But I already had a hemorrhoid earlier.”

“Sounds gross,” a deep, familiar voice said behind me. “But if you need a medical professional to take a look at your weird butt, I’m your man.”

I turned and scowled at Dr. Ben Solo towering over me, giving that stupid wry smile of his. It had been haunting me since we were both hired by Luke to help him run the clinic. Solo looked good underneath his doctor’s coat; broad, solid, and tall. Unfortunately, his personality was like if a dumpster fire and a cactus had a baby. It was a tragedy that his face didn’t look prickly; giving my hormones a fighting chance against him. He smelled like coffee and his face was rough in all the right ways; long, masculine jaw, strong nose, and deeply set brown eyes.

He grumbled, "Mind not hogging the entire nurse’s station? Some of us are trying to do work.”

And just like that, his voice snapped me back into reality. I scooted a begrudging half a foot so that he could slide Maz his finished chart. 

She took it and flipped through. “Wow, that was fast. We need to refer the patient up to County?”

He nodded, “I’m thinking that it’s a bowel blockage. Shouldn’t take more than an hour for their surgical team to look at the scans and determine the same thing. Do you mind calling them and forwarding the chart?”

“I’ll do it first thing. But in the meantime, here you guys go.” She handed us each a set of fresh papers.

“Oh, looky who I got,” Solo said, leaning his file towards me so that I could see the name. 

“Dr. Snoke.” I lifted a brow. “Man. I haven’t thought about him in forever.”

Maz asked, “He taught at the hospital, didn’t he?” 

Solo said, “We had him for one of our rotations for our residency. He forced us to pair up all the time.”

“Good lord. Why?”’

I explained, “He called us his experiment. He thought if he kept putting us together, we’d stop arguing so much in class. He said we couldn’t be competitive if we were on the same side.”

“And how did that work out?” Maz asked.

I glanced at the man in question, “Well it didn’t cure Solo of being an overrated kiss ass, so not well.”

He sighed, “Didn’t cure her of being an insufferable know it all either. We ended up getting separated because she wouldn’t stop sabotaging our bacteria cultures.”

I snorted, “You’re still blaming me for the fact bacteria can’t grow on a petri dish you didn’t wipe all of the bleach off of?”

“You have to start with a bacteria-free dish to grow things, genius.”

Maz held up a hand, “Will you two please remember that you’re now doctors and not teenagers?”

We both gave side glances. Fat chance. We’d been like this since we met. It wasn’t an accident we both became doctors at the same practice. Anything he could do, I could do better, and he thought the same. It was certainly not the healthiest of working relationships. 

I tapped my chart on the desk, “Sorry, Maz.”

Then I started scanning over the paperwork. Mrs. Beru Lars, 78, with pain in her left knee. She was one of our regulars that needed a cortisone shot to stop the swelling. Easy.

Maz was jotting something on a post-it note when she asked, “I forgot to ask you. Do you still have your date tonight?”

For the first time all day, I thought about Aftab. A sinking guilt began bubbling in my stomach. My first date in at least a month and I would have forgotten all about it if Maz hadn’t reminded me. But I faked excitement for the sake of my pride. And also, Solo was clearly listening in by the tilt of his head and I didn’t need him mocking me over anything else. “I’m excited. It should be a good time.”

“What’s the plan?”

“I’m going to pick him up and then we’re going to go over to the bowling alley; play a few games and grab pizza and a beer.” There was a mannish snort that I refused to acknowledge. I went on, “It’ll be relaxed. I could use relaxed after all this…” I waved a hand vaguely at waiting room, packed with sniffling toddlers.

Solo couldn’t help himself and asked, “So why doesn’t he have his chariot awaiting you?”

Because he had a DUI a month ago and still wasn’t able to get his car from the impound lot. I had only found that out after agreeing to the date and was too awkward to break it off. But since that was clearly the worst thing I could say, I lied, “Because he lives in Cala City and why would we drive all that way when he can just stay the night at my place and I can drop him back off to work in the morning.” 

Solo’s smug smile dropped and he frowned disapprovingly, “Isn’t this a first date?”

I leaned an elbow on the counter, “Are you, of all people, really going to lecture me about the dangers of being loose—Mister “I don’t know why our inventory of condoms is off by twenty every month”?”

“Ya know, I don’t think that’d fit on a birth certificate,” he pointed out.

I rolled my eyes so hard I thought I’d see brain matter. Then I turned my attention to Maz, “Anyways. I’m excited and I’ll give you all the details tomorrow.”

“Good girl,” She said with a wink. “Now get going. Don’t you two have a job to do?”

We both grumbled yes and headed back through the double doors to the patient rooms. After Mrs. Lars’ bum knee, there were three cases of excessive coughing requiring x-rays, four fevers that were just a viral thing going around, and one sprained elbow. I finished my paperwork up and grabbed my coat to leave the clinic. That’s when I noticed that my keys were in the wrong pocket and a condom from the supply closet had been placed in there. Solo. I laughed. How supportive of my dating life.

…..BEN….  
I paused scratching the massive brown dog long enough to grab a beer that Dad was offering from his place on the Lay-Z-Boy. I took a sip, struggling only slightly at Chewie’s frantic attempts to lick my face, while I watched the football game. “We’re looking pretty good this year, aren’t we?” I said.

My dad’s craggy voice sounded wary, “A little too good. I don’t like when we’re this good so early. Doesn’t bode well for the playoffs.”

“True,” I said, placing my beer on the carpet. 

“Ah-ah-ah!” Mom said from the kitchen doorway, pointing to my bottle. “Coaster!”

I put it above me on the coffee table, then wrestled with the mutt.

She folded her arms across her chest, “Are you done horsing around?”

“No.”

Dad waved her off, “Aw hell, Leia. They’re fine.”

I looked down at the mop of brown hair under my chin, “That’s right. You’re a good boy aren’t you?”

Mom said, “Come be a good son and help me in the kitchen.”

I hauled myself off the floor. Chewie scrambled to move in front of me. I patted his head, “Give me just a minute, pal,” I said. “Go. Sick Dad!”

“Don’t you dare, you fuzzball!” Dad squawked from his arm chair as Chewie lept up in his lap, knocking over his beer. I cackled as I left him to clean it up himself.

In the kitchen, my mother was making quick work of some carrots at the cutting board on the kitchen island. The place was cramped with pans and bowls and spice bottles, but she always knew where everything was, which baffled me since she definitely didn’t cook when I was growing up. Retirement was suiting her. The petite brunette pointed at the far wooden cabinet, “Can you get the blue bowl from up there?”  
I did as she asked. It was the top of the shelf, which was out of reach of her short frame. In a pinch, she could use the step stool, but when others were around, she seemed happy to order them to do her bidding. Thinking of, I asked, “Where’s C3PO?”

“Has the night off.”

“Did you have to force him to take it?” I guessed about the needy butler.

“You know it.”

“Is your cooking going to poison us?”

“Maybe. The smoke detector going off is a given.” She pointed to a stool opposite her on the kitchen island. “Sit. Talk to me. You’re always  
too busy with work to tell me anything.”

“There’s not much to tell.”

“No?” She grabbed a head of cabbage from the fridge. Carefully, she began cutting and adding its leaves to the carrots. “You know how much I like it when you gossip about work.”

“You only like that I gossip about work because Rey refuses to, so you need gossip on her,” I pointed out.

She didn’t hide her honesty. “Of course that’s why. Now give me the details.”

It killed me that Rey had my family wrapped around her little finger. My dad met her during our residency at the hospital and they struck up an odd friendship. Now there was a standing invitation for her to attend weekly Friday night dinner, which she thankfully always declined. 

My mother on more than one occasion had pointed out how sweet Rey’s smile was. And she wasn’t wrong. Those dimples distracted me. But then she’d open her mouth and I was reminded why she wasn’t ever going to be for me. Hence why I took steps to sabotage her date before I left work. I couldn’t wait to hear how awful it was on Monday. 

I pulled out the stool across from my mother and leaned my elbows on the island’s counter. “Okay. You want some dirt on the clinic?”

“Bring it.”

I surprised myself by bringing some actual news. “I think Luke is going to finally retire.”

“Really?”

“He had lunch with a lawyer. One of the nurses told me.”

She glanced up from her chopping, “And did that information come for free? Or did you have to do a little—“ She lifted up two words to  
mimic fingering, “vaginal test to know for sure.”

I barked a laugh. “Christ, mom! Don’t be gross. No. No. That nurse is like, 20.”

“Really? Never with any of a nurse or a patient?” she asked, cocking a thin brow at me.

I held my hand up, “Scout’s honor.”

“You bit another child and were kicked out of scouts,” she reminded.

Fact was, I was never a lothario. I went out on a few dates here and there, but the clinic kept me busy. And now that Luke seemed somewhat earnest about retiring, that meant I had to be serious about taking over.

She paused her chopping. “So, what does all this mean for the clinic? Would Rey really leave if you were in charge?”

I asked, “Did she tell you about last week?”

“No?”

“My Spanish is a little rusty, so I asked your darling favorite person how to say a few yes or no general medical questions for exams so she didn’t have to handle every patient that spoke Spanish. She wrote them down for me. And then I asked a very sweet eighty year old abuela if she’d ever had any problems with her dildo.”

Mom cackled like a sea witch, loud enough for dad in the living room to peer into the kitchen curiously. She tossed the last of the cabbage into the bowl then wiped her hands on her apron. “You two are a goddamn trip, you know that?”

I said, “She can’t be my boss. And she’d never accept me as hers. If Luke is really retiring, then whoever doesn’t get offered the clinic’ll probably go work at the county hospital.”

“That’s awful.”

“I know. County’s rotation is garbage. It’s a half hour commute to work every day and I’d never have regulars. I didn’t get into medicine to be bored in a car. I got into medicine to watch people grow from kids to old age—see the whole life cycle.”

“That’s what you have me and your old man for,” she teased.

There was a loud slam, enough to silence the house outside of the football on the TV. Then I heard stomping. I braced myself as Rey threw open the door to the kitchen with murder glittering in her eyes, her cheeks pink. Rey looked adorable in her pale green shirtdress, a lock of her dark hair fallen out of her half-up hair style. 

“You!”

“Rey, honey, what’s wrong?” Mom asked.

She shot my mother a brief smile, “Hi, sorry to intrude, Leia! I just need to strangle your son.”

Mom muttered something under her breath and left the room, leaving me to the wolves. Or in this case, she-wolf.


	2. Chapter 2

....BEN...

I couldn’t hide my grin, “Hi, sweetheart.”

“Don’t you sweetheart me, you ape.” She stormed to within an inch of me and jabbed her finger not un-painlessly into the expanse of my chest, “You ruined my date!”

I balked, feigning scandal, “I’ve been here all night! How could I have done anything!”

“Does this ring a bell?” She damn near shouted. Then she slammed a crumpled, blue pamphlet onto the kitchen island. It read in italics ‘How to tell your partner about your STD status’.

There was a beat of silence. It was no doubted the first time something STD-related had ever been placed on the kitchen top, which made the whole thing a smidge funny.

Rey stabbed her bony finger into my sternum again, “This was you, you son of a bitch. I could have blamed it on my absent brain accidentally taking something home while cleaning up the waiting room, but you gave yourself away with your cocky condom addition in my coat pocket.”

Getting caught planting the pamphlet hadn’t been part of the plan. I gave my most self-deprecating but charming smile, “Sue me. I wanted you to be extra safe.”

“Bullshit,” she snapped. Her narrowed eyes were nearly black up close and her cheeks were now red enough to know that I bothered her good and well. “Aftab saw that pamphlet in my purse and no surprise, he cut our date short.”

“You mean he didn’t play the whole ten frames of bowling?” I feigned a hand over my heart.

Rey dug into her coat pockets and slapped a magnum condom onto the counter. “So you don’t even deny this is yours too?” 

I gave a resigned sigh, “I took that out of my personal collection.”

She let out a shriek of frustration and grabbed the nearest thing—a carrot—and brandished it like a weapon, “I’m going to get soooo even with you, Solo.”

“By what? Giving me an overdose of vitamin A?”

I leaned back against the counter and grinned down at her. As much as I enjoyed annoying her, the biggest emotion I felt was relief that she didn’t go home with that nerf herder. Then I cocked my head, “How’d you find out where I was?”

“It’s Friday night. Where else would you be?”

“You memorizing my schedule now?”

“It’s remarkably easy when you have no friends!”

“Oh that’s rich coming from you. What’s this, your first date in half a year?”

“No,” she shot back, her eyes darting away. Liar.

“Do you want to stay for dinner?”

The question froze her lips open into an ‘o’. My gaze lingered a little too long on them. I explained casually, “You didn’t get to eat. My parents ask you every week to come anyways. Stay.”

She clenched her teeth and focused on my neck, licking her lips. I swallowed hard, wondering briefly if she was going to lean up and bite my jugular. Instead, she blinked. “No.”

“Good,” I covered very poorly.

“Watch yourself, Solo. I’m going to get you back,” she warned, raising the carrot to me.

I lunged and took a giant crunching bite. Glee spread through me at her near-snarl. Then she twisted away and stormed out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry it's so short! will make up for it with the next.


	3. Chapter 3

….. BEN …..

She did get me back.

In the most childish way possible. 

Rey knew how much I loved my black Mercedes Benz. She was my pride and joy—buttery leather interior, sleek exterior lines, a ridiculous sound system, and most importantly, she took a mere 6.3 seconds to go from zero to sixty. She was my one big luxury item I’d gotten the minute after I paid my last student loan. 

It took me twenty-five minutes to scrape the ‘For Rectal Use Only’ stickers off her bumper. Rey had arranged the little stickers for rectal thermometers into the shape of a penis. I had to gently peel off each one with my blunt fingernails out of fear if I used any tools, I’d end up scratching the paint. It took an eon to get them all off. So of course, that was the morning Luke was looking for me. He ushered me into his office. 

Rey was already sitting in one of the chairs, a smug smile threatening to escape her. “Glad you could finally make it, Solo.”

I sat down stiffly and ignored her. “I’m sorry about that, sir. I had car trouble.”

“I’m sure the stickers on your bumper had nothing to do with that trouble,” Luke muttered, going around the desk to sit in the high-backed leather monstrosity that looked closer to a throne than a chair. He gave a defeated sigh. “You kids will never learn to play nice, will you?”

Caught, Rey at least tried to feign shame. “Sir, I realize that my actions weren’t exactly professional—”

“An understatement. You embarrass yourself and the practice when you do things like this,” he scolded.

I bounced my ankle on my knee with glee at a little bit of justice. Her face went red. So did the little bit of her chest that I could see from her blue scrubs top. I wondered idly where else she blushed when she was feeling strongly about me. 

“And you, Ben. You should be particularly ashamed of your childishness. You’re no better than she is. I know you were raised better.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but the sharp look in his blue eyes expression wisely warned me away. “This is a medical clinic, not a playground. I’m done worrying if we have a universal donor on staff in case you finally do try to kill each other. That’s why I’ve put off leaving.”

Both of us sat a little straighter at that.

Luke clasped his hands on top of the desk. “I’ll be retiring at the end of the year. I had planned to give the clinic to you both to run together. But clearly that isn’t what either of you would want, so I’ll be handing over the clinic to one of you to run. The county hospital is in desperate need of more doctors. I’ve already spoken with the medical director there and put in recommendations for you both. He’s agreed that whichever one isn’t offered the clinic would be offered a spot in its internal medicine department.”

There was a beat of silence as we both faked absorbing the news we’d been anticipating for days now. I’d wanted this clinic to be mine for as long as I’d wanted to practice family medicine. A clinic was a legacy. And this one was going to be mine.

We both fumbled over each other to congratulate him. “That’s great news! Congratulations!” 

“What will you do with your time off?”

He gave a little shrug. “I don’t know. Probably find a nice island and have some peace and quiet.”

“If they’ve got those little umbrella drinks there, remember to invite me,” Rey said.

I leaned over and whispered, “Not even out of his office and you’re already sucking up?”

She gave me a withering glare that would have shrunken the dick of a lesser man. Instead, it was giving me a bit of an opposite problem. I shifted my legs to hide it and mentally chided myself. What was with my body betraying me when it came to her? It was like the heat of a nova burned out of her luminous brown eyes and straight into mine. I couldn’t stop it.

“Kids,” Luke rasped.

Both of our heads snapped, severing our connection.

“I’m going to be watching you both like a hawk. I expect nothing less than glowing reviews and error-free paperwork. Three months should give me time to wrap things up here and make my decision on which of you should run this place. Then I’ll send out letters letting the patients know about the transition. I suggest putting your little rivalry aside because you’re going to need every spare minute to work your butts off.”

….. REY…..

The moment Solo shut the door after leaving Luke’s office, I grabbed a fistful of his scrubs and was dragging him into an empty exam room. I shoved him inside and locked the door with a satisfying click behind us. 

He held his hands up innocently, “Whoa there. What’d I do?”

“No more fooling around, Solo.”

His eyes flickered down my body. There was something hungry and predatory in them. “Well I can’t say I haven’t thought about it.”

My mouth gaped open for a moment. “My god! You arrogant, conceited, narcissistic—”

“Don’t hold back,” he murmured, focusing on my throat.

“Stop looking at me!” I snapped.

“What?”

“Just—stop looking at me like that!”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, but just stop!”

“Well what do you expect me to do? You were the one who dragged me in here in the first place. I’m allowed to look at my kidnapper.”

“Oh screw off. You’re as tall as a tree. If you didn’t want to follow me, you wouldn’t have.”

“So why are we here, Rey?” He asked, his voice a little softer.

We were standing too close and the frisson of tension made me want to crawl out of my skin. I couldn’t stand the way he was boring holes into me. I reached up and slipped my hand over his eyes. His skin was warm. He let out a disgruntled noise. 

With his eyes covered, I could focus. I said firmly, “We need to make rules for this.”

“Rules,” he repeated, dumbfounded but surprisingly not moving my hand away.

“Yes. Only one of us Is going to get the practice. We can either fight each other the whole time or we can do what Luke wants and agree to a fair competition and let the best man win.”

“And you think I’d trust you not to play any dirty tricks for three months?”

“Goodness no,” I said. “I’m already planning how to show Luke why I’ll run the clinic better than you. But we shouldn’t be risking a patient’s health just to get back at each other.”

“That’s a given. We both took the same Hippocratic Oath. Or was yours done in Latin and said backwards while a virgin was sacrificed? It’s the only way I can think you became a doc—”

I moved my hand from his eyes and slapped it over his mouth. “Do you have an off button somewhere?”

He licked my hand, sending sparks down my arm and through to my spine, but I held my hand in place. “The rule is: no messing with patients. No touching their paperwork or their labs or doing anything that could cause harm. Agreed?”

He bit the meat of my palm and I snatched my hand back with a yelp. “Agreed.”


	4. Chapter 4

...... REY.....

Making Solo miserable wasn’t the only way fight dirty. Another was to make sure I had great standing with the clinic’s staff. Normally I was well-liked, but I wasn’t putting it up to chance. Not when my job was at risk.

I was careful to lift the cardboard coffee carrier with both hands, balancing my own cup on top of the others as I got out of my car. I opened the clinic doors with an accidental flourish as I got myself and the coffees successfully through the doors. 

One of our male nurses, I.G., greeted me with a bland smile at the front desk, “Good morning, Dr. Skywalker.”

“Morning, Iggy. Iced mocha with caramel, right?” I said, passing a plastic cup off to him.

His big eyes broadened as he took it from me, “Oh! That’s so sweet! Thank you!”

I waved him off, “No problem. Have you seen the others?” 

“I think they’re in the break room.” I.G. gave a little wave as I went through the double doors. Down the patient hallway and to the left was a small rectangular break room. It was barely more than a fridge and a round Formica table, some cupboards and a sink. Maz zeroed in on the tray in my hands. “Are those for us?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, handing her cup over.

“You’re just trying to bribe us with goodies,” she admonished. She still took a sip and sighed with joy all the same.

I demurred, “Not a bribe. I just stopped by to get my own and thought you guys could use some too.”

Kalonia, a brunette north of forty, took her cup from the holder. “You’re an angel. How’d your date go? You didn’t tell me.”

I lied through my teeth, “It was fine, but I don’t think we’ll have another.”

“Aw, c’mon sweetheart. You should give him a second chance,” a voice said from the doorway.

I didn’t bother turning around for fear I’d rip Solo’s stupid face off if I saw it. I offered up coffees to the caretakers milling around the table. 

"Oh, you brought me coffee too? You’re just the best," he said, reaching over my shoulder and grabbing the last cup—my own—from my hands.

That. Bastard.

He knew damn well that was my coffee cup and I’d rather lop off my arm 127 Hours-style than have fetched him one. My only solace was that he winced when he took a sip since my three sugars made it so sweet it hurt his stupid white teeth. 

But we were in front of the staff, so I laid it on thick. “Any time, pal. I figured you could use a cheat day from those little green smoothies you make.”

Score one for Rey. His deeply set eyes narrowed in annoyance. He hated when I called him out for his less than masculine morning routine of kale and spinach shakes in front of everyone. As aloof as he wanted to appear, it took a lot of effort to stay so strong. I knew he ran in the morning and went to the gym at night. Not that I was stalking him. 

“Here. I figured we could all use a treat,” he said, holding out a box of donuts. 

Maz dove in, “Oh! There are so many to choose from!”

I flicked a glance at the donut box while Kalonia picked one out. I was hoping neither would touch the delicious looking apple fritter in there that was calling to me. They were my favorite. 

Solo and I had silently agreed when we both joined the clinic that we would at least maintain a semblance of professionalism outwardly. That meant participating in nice gestures, in spite of my instinct telling me there was a trick coming up.

While the others sorted through the box, he leaned down so no one could hear and rasped, “Don’t worry. I didn’t poison them.”

“And how do I know that?” I whispered.

“I’m not covering your patients if you were to go down with the death shits mid-work day. Plus, it’s fun watching you try to be polite in public. Like seeing a bear try to ride a unicycle.”

“That’s rich coming from the guy that’s as charming as a house fire,” I muttered. Once the other two had taken theirs, I snagged the big, sugar coated fritter from the box. It was still warm. I took a bite.

Salt.

It was coated in salt, not sugar. 

And I couldn’t spit it out in front of the staff because they’d realize something was wrong. Saliva pooling in my mouth. I pretended it was a normal bite. I chewed with a fake, crumbling smile as Solo watched with rapt, smug attention. I could feel his amused gaze on me.

“Is yours good?” Maz asked.

I nodded, trying to chew through the misery. Solo tossed an arm lazily around my shoulder, “Anything for my girls.”

I swallowed with a thick gluck. Then I leaned up to his ear—stupid height difference—and said through gritted teeth, “You’re gonna pay for this.”

He smirked, then said loud enough for everyone to hear, “No, really. You’re welcome.”

As tactfully as I could, I moved away from him, and placed my salty fritter on a napkin. “I better take this to go. I’ve got patient files to pull.”

He took another wincing sip of my sweet coffee. “See you around, Rey.”

I beamed a fake smile at him and waved to the ladies. And then I started to brainstorm all the ways I’d make Solo pay.


	5. Chapter 5

I’d been waiting for days for Rey to get me back. At every small inconvenience, I jumped to blame her. But she didn’t make the fax machine run slower. And she wasn’t the reason I was wearing two different sneakers. That was solely my fault. I’d been staying late every night to have my paperwork done before Luke would arrive the next morning and I’d been taking more patients than usual; working through lunches and coffee breaks. I even missed my family’s Friday night dinner and had been dodging calls from my mother ever since. 

I was having a hell of a bad day and it wasn’t letting up. Knowing that some awful thing was on its way from Rey was driving me to panic. What would she do to me? And when was it going to happen? And why did I let it get like this between us?

Now those doe eyes were haunting me. Any time she looked at me, I was bracing for the worst. Her scrunched up fury was addicting, but the payback…

Double checking the chart, I opened the door to Mr. Calrissian’s room. Usually he went to the cardiologist that I referred him to, but from the nurse’s notes, he was struggling with a nasty cold. The older man was still looking sly with his slicked back grey hair and mustache groomed perfectly. A mustard yellow jacket was draped over his shoulders.

I set his chart on the counter, “Afternoon, Lando. I hear you’re under the weather.”

“That’s an understatement, kid” he said, his voice smooth and rich. “I’ve been fighting off this thing for days, but nothing’s working.”

“Yea? How’s the heart murmur? Giving you any trouble?” I asked, pulling the rolling stool closer. Then I sat down with the loudest fart on the planet. 

Pffffffffththththththththththththth.

Horrified, I tried to stand up, but the damage was done. Lando was cackling with laughter. Cheeks flushed in embarrassment, I hunched over the chair. It hadn’t been me. But the black chair looked otherwise fine. And there was nothing underneath to indicate it had been tampered with.

I tried to regain my dignity, but it was impossible. I meekly said, “That was the chair.”

“Thank god in my old age that my nose isn’t what it used to be.”

Somehow this was Rey’s fault. I couldn’t figure it out, but it was her. I was tempted to get the phone out of my pocket and google how to kill a woman with a tongue depressor but refrained. There was time to murder her later. Right now, I needed to get Mr. Calrissian done. And I’m sure he wanted to be far away from me too. 

“Anyways. What’s feeling bad?”

“Head aches, my nose is running, I’ve been coughing like hell.”

“Fever?”

“101 last time I checked.”

“Alright, let’s take a listen to that cough.” I took the stethoscope from around my neck and put the earpieces in. 

And then I let out a startled scream.

“Whoa, you alright, son?” Lando asked.

Something cold, wet and slick was in my ear canal. I took the stethoscope away and realized the earpieces were covered in a thin layer of clear gel. 

God damn it, it was anal lubricant. 

I apologized to Lando, “I’m so sorry. I’ll be right back.” 

I hightailed it out of the room and down the hall to the supply closet to find Q-Tips to get the lube out. On the way, Rey was looking innocently up from her cup of coffee in the doorway to the break room. She asked demurely, “You alright?”

I jabbed a finger down the hall. “Go take care of Calrissian in room 4.”

“And why would I voluntarily take an extra patient?”

“Because I have to go scrape lube out of my ears, you brat,” I growled.

She beamed a sunny smile and damn near skipped past me, “No problem, but you owe me one.”

….REY….

Mr. Calrissian had been a very smooth-talking patient and a very funny one. Apparently Solo hadn’t been able to figure out that I sewed a whoopee cushion into the rolling stool. I wasn’t going to be the one to break that news to him since I valued an unthrottled neck. I opened the door to the tiny supply closet to check on my victim. Solo was hunched over something on the floor. 

“How’re your lubed ears doing?” I asked.

“What?”

“How’re your ears?”

"What?"

"How're your ears?"

“Huh?”

“How are your—oh go rot,” I said, rolling my eyes as I realized he was just being a dick. 

He looked over his shoulder and grinned. For just a second, I forgot he was a shark out to take my job from me. He looked so handsome. The corners of my mouth started to turn up in a matching smile. He said calmly, “So I’ve got a bit of a problem.”

And then he held up a bloodied hand.

What the fuck? My training kicked in and I squatted down on the floor with him. I asked, “What happened?”

“I was looking for more Q-tips. I moved some scalpels to find more, but since my hands were covered in lube, I dropped them and…”

I saw the rest. The deep gash was between his right thumb and index finger. I looked at the gauze he’d been using to slow the bleeding with and could tell he’d need a few stitches to keep it shut. Then I noticed something else. “Did you try to sew yourself up?”

Thread was in his left hand. “Well not yet.”

I gave an exasperated sigh, “You are so infuriating. I’m not such a monster I’d make you stitch your hand with your non-dominant one.” 

I shoved him to sit all the way down, then crawled to sit across from him. A cramped supply closet wasn’t the ideal place for this, but it would do in a pinch since everything was already laid out. 

I took his hand in mine and noted how much bigger it was. His palm was calloused and his fingernails were blunt but clean. I staunched the wound and disinfected it.

Solo tugged on his ear in discomfort. I asked, “Do you still have lube in there?”

“Yea. And thank you for that,” He added dryly. 

I reached out towards him and he backed up. I made a face. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

Hesitantly, he leaned forward. I tucked his shaggy black hair behind the shell of his ear. My fingers lingered for a moment and our eyes met. What was it about this face that made my stomach clench?

I forced myself to move. Using a clean Q-Tip from the pile, I wiped some remaining residue from inside his ear. 

Unconsciously, he leaned into my hand, rubbing his jaw against my wrist.

My breath seized in my chest. 

“Sorry,” he said softly, a little embarrassed as he took the Q-Tip from me. “It just feels good.”

I focused on his hand because if I didn’t, I’d be tempted to kiss his stupid face. The anesthetic I injected into his palm only took a few seconds to kick in. Then I started stitching.

He broke the silence nearly immediately. “You look tired.”

“Thanks,” I grunted moodily.

“Oh knock it off. You know you’re beautiful. I’m just saying you also happen to look tired.”

I froze mid-stitch, “Really?”

His asked sarcastically, “I assume you’ve come across a mirror at some point in your life?”

“I’m just surprised you’d admit an obvious thing,” I said, tying off a stitch. “As for being tired, I’ve been coming in early to keep up with you.”

“Do you think Luke’s even noticing how hard we’re busting our asses?”

“Honestly? Probably not. He’s probably already made up his mind.”

“Yea, obvious choice and all that,” he gloated.

I pulled his stitch a little tighter than necessary just to see him wince. 

“Can we stop this?” he asked.

I looked up to find I’d moved during my work to be only a few inches from his face. “Stop what?”

“Stop hurting each other for fun.”

I wished we could. I wished it didn’t have to be this way. I wish we weren’t competing for the same job. “We could try to be more professional. But I think we both know that’ll last a day.”

“We’d kill each other if we had to work together without Luke around.”

“Can you imagine being my boss?” I asked with a laugh.

But the look I got back wasn’t teasing. It was hard and intense. The mood shifted. 

The injured hand laying in my lap was forgotten. I was absorbed in his dark brown eyes. The way he smelled clean but not like antiseptic. The way he was broad and strong, like I could curl right into him. The way I wanted to know if he kissed the way he argued.

His voice was calm, “Maybe I want to boss you around.”

My throat dried into the Sahara Desert. “I wouldn’t like it.”

“I disagree.”

“What do you know?”

“That you love when we fight. Just as much as I do. And you’ll miss this when you’re gone.”

“You mean when *you’re* gone.”

He tilted his head back to look up at the ceiling, as if the sight of me might make him combust. 

Then his phone rang. He muttered a curse and tried to pull his cell out of his scrub pants with the non-dominant hand since I was still holding his injured one. Had I been holding it this whole time?

As much as I enjoyed watching him struggle, I swatted his hand away and leaned over to get the phone in his pants.

He yelped when I dug my hand around, “Hey! Careful there, princess!”

“Quit being such a baby.” I searched his upper thigh and briefly brushed against something that definitely wasn’t his leg before grasping the phone and pulling it out.

The caller ID said Mom. He tried to snatch the phone but I was quicker and answered, “Hey Leia!”

There was a startled pause before the older woman asked, “Rey? Is that you?”

“Yes ma’am. I’m in the process of helping your son with something and he asked if I could answer the phone for him.”

His death glare made me grin like a loon. I ignored his outstretched hand demanding the phone back. “So how are you and Han? Retirement suiting you?”

“Dear, I’m bored to tears. Han won’t stop tinkering with the car so I’m all on my own.”

“You should remind him that he married up,” I joked. But only half joked because it was well-known that Han wasn’t who a woman like Leia ought to have settled down with. 

“How about you remind him yourself tonight.”

“What?”

Solo held out his hand and mouthed, “Give me the phone.”

Leia went on, “Dinner. Tonight. It’s our weekly Friday night dinner and Ben’s been talking about you nonstop.”

“Oh he has?” I asked, curiosity piqued.

Solo was fuming as he reached for the phone but I slapped him away again. 

“Just come over tonight. We’re already having another guest. Han’ll be so happy to see you that he may actually come out of the garage. You know, he could use some help on the Falcon. He's been having trouble with a compressor. You know so much about cars, maybe you could help him. ”

“Oh Leia, I don’t think that’s such a good ide—”

“Seven o’clock. Don’t be late. I’ll see you tonight.”

And then she hung up.

I stared at the phone in disbelief. The woman had cleanly and neatly boxed me in by not letting me get a word in edgewise. 

“So. You’re coming to dinner tonight,” he said matter of fact.

“She just… hung up.”

“It’s her favorite power move. I would have warned you about it if you’d given back the phone.”

“Well where was the fun in that? I’ll just call her back and tell her I can’t make it.”

“She won’t answer.”

Solo was right. I tried three times while he looked on, bored. 

I gave up and finished stitching up his hand. There was only minor bitching on his part about the way I was doing it, which surprised me. Then we cleaned up the supply room and left.

That’s when the hard part started: deciding what to wear to an arch nemesis’s mother’s house for family dinner.


	6. Chapter 6

…REY…

It turned out that a grey dress from the back of my closet was the closest I could get to appropriate for a trip to Solo’s parent’s place. There was no time between finishing up at the practice and making it to dinner by seven to do anything with makeup. I was barely able to put my hair partly up. Swinging by to get flowers had been a last-minute decision, but I was sure Leia would appreciate the gesture. 

I pulled up at the same time that Solo did. He was wearing a nice pullover that I refuse to acknowledge accentuated his dark eyes. He said,  
“Hey.”

“Hey yourself.”

I smoothed my dress for the umpteenth time and started up the walk. Solo snagged my arm. “Wait. Before we go in, we need to talk about rules.” 

“Rules,” I repeated.

“My family’s going to treat this like they’re meeting a girlfriend.”

“Why? They know we work together.”

“Yea, and then my mother’s going to see you and you’re all…” He waved a hand over me. 

“I’m what?” I asked, mock-innocently.

He frowned at having to point out the obvious. The word came out like an insult. “Cute. My mom will notice that you’re cute. And then she’ll try to set us up, even though there’s no universe in which you and I would ever date.”

So what if my heart started beating a little faster? I scoffed, “No universe? Even when you said this,” I waved at my face, “Was cute?”

Annoyed, he looked away, towards the house, like he was dreading going into some haunted mansion. Fact was, his parent’s place was nice. It was a Victorian style house with a well-manicured garden. He said, “My mom will think you were cute. I know full well you’re a lizard in a human suit. I’m just giving you fair warning.”

I sighed, resigned, “Fine.”

“Now, we’ve got an hour and a half to get through. Half of that time they’re going to spend embarrassing me. The other half my mom will  
spend trying to get to know you even better. Since we don’t want either, no matter what they say or rope us into doing, we leave at 8:30. Got it?”

I gave a mock salute, “Got it.”

“Okay. Let’s go.” We walked over to the front door. He knocked hard. I tried to calm the sudden desire to run as hard as I could in the opposite direction. After all, it wasn’t like I was an actual girlfriend meeting the parents for the first time. But I still felt nervous as hell. Solo didn’t look much better. He patted my back in a show of support.

His mother chose that exact moment of friendly intimacy to open the door; his hand on my spine and me looking gratefully up at him. It only took the woman a millisecond to size the situation up and grin like a Cheshire cat. Leia’s eyes, so much like her son’s, never left mine as she crowed, “Rey, dear! It’s so good to see you again.”

I handed her the small bouquet of daisies as we separated, “Here. I figured you could use these.”

“How thoughtful of you. Come on in,” She said, pulling Solo down for a kiss on the cheek. I’d been to the house a few times over the years. Usually it was to help Han with the car. Back when I was a resident, I’d bumped into him in the hospital’s cafeteria and we’d gotten on the topic of cars. He’d bought the Ford Falcon as a fixer upper and I had a soft spot for muscle cars. It was a no-brainer when he’d ask me to come over for help on occasion. 

But now being in the house was different. It wasn’t as Rey, the car-loving resident. It was as Rey, “the girl who will destroy their son’s dream to own a clinic”.

Chewie raced up and tried to hop onto me. I scrubbed his floppy ears and made kissy sounds. “How’s my handsome doggie? Who’s a good boy?”

Solo rolled his eyes and hung up my coat. “You know he eats his own poop, right?”

“You know I’ve looked at twenty slide of poop today for work, right?”

Leia hadn’t heard a thing since she was too busy returning to the mudroom with the flowers now in a vase. She beckoned, “Come on in. I have someone for you to meet.”

I glanced back at Solo to see he was just as unsure as I was.

…. BEN…..

I hated Poe Dameron.

Hate was a strong word to use, but there was no other descriptor for the heat in my gut at the sight of the guy who had the balls to kiss  
Rey’s hand as a greeting. Leia explained to Rey, “Poe is my protégé. He’s an excellent pilot. Best one in the Air Force in my opinion.”

“Oh please, Leia,” Poe said, scratching the back of his head in embarrassment. “I’m just a soldier.”

“False modesty gets you nowhere, Dameron.” She patted his cheek like he were a favorite son—which he might as well have been, having gone into the military like my mom had always hoped I would. But it wasn’t for me. I was a healer by nature and I wouldn’t have done well with listening to orders. 

Leia locked arms with Rey. “Now Rey here works with Ben. She’s a great doctor—”

“And a great mechanic,” Dad said as he came in the living room from the garage, like usual. 

“Han!” Rey said excitedly, crossing to give him a bear hug that he accepted with more enthusiasm than he ever gave me. It wasn’t surprising since they were both deeply in love with my dad’s Ford Falcon. She’d been helping him get the piece of junk running for the past few years. Finding the parts and negotiating the price was my dad’s favorite hobby since he retired.

“How you doing, kid?” he asked her.

“Good. I’ve missed you a bit. You haven’t needed my help.”

“That’s changed. I’ve been working on the compressor. Could use some help getting it in you’re up for it.”

Leia frowned, “Don’t you dare. Rey’s got a lot of work on her plate. She doesn’t need to deal with a car that hasn’t run in twenty years.”

“It’s not just a car, ma’am. It’s *the* car,” Rey corrected.

Leia waved a hand, “Whatever you say, dear. Now come on in and sit down.”

I tried to sit next to Rey when my mother ushered me up, “Let the guests have the love seat. You sit over here.” 

As Poe and Rey sat down, it hit me that she was setting them up.

She was actually setting Rey and Poe up on a date. And I was there like the world’s awkwardest third wheel.

My hands curled into fists and I stomped over to sit next to my mother. She coiled her feet up on the sofa like a cat that got the cream. “You two just look like a pair.”

I muttered, “A pair of—”

Mom kicked me hard enough that I yelped. That caused Rey to beam a smile. And damnit, I forgot about her dimples. I hadn’t been lying earlier when I told her she was cute. It was just a shame she was also made of untouchable porcupine spikes. 

Poe clearly didn’t feel that way. He turned to Rey and began his usually schmoozing. I’d known Poe a long time. His head was always in his cockpit and that made him not right for Rey. Rey needed someone who couldn’t just keep up with her, but keep her going. Our jobs were stressful and exhausting. The last thing she needed after a long day at the clinic was some flyboy trying to show her off at a bar or one of the notorious air force parties. She needed to be comfortable and cared for. Poe wasn’t for her.

Not that it mattered because it wasn’t like I was either.

“Darling, you’re glaring,” my mother whispered in my ears.

I hadn’t realized it, but she was right. I’d been glaring daggers at them while they chatted about a preserve they’d both visited for porgs. 

Suddenly, C3PO came in from the kitchen, “Ma’am, dinner is ready.”

We started to get up and head in, but Rey held me back. She hissed so only I could hear, “Did you know she was going to try and set me up?”

“I thought she’d try to set you up with me, not Poe!”

“We didn’t make a contingency plan for anyone else.”

I stuck my hands in my pockets, “Listen, the play hasn’t changed. In and out in an hour and a half. Let’s keep it short and sweet.”

She glanced back at Poe. 

My ears started to go red at the idea she thought Poe was short and sweet. I touched her elbow. “Hey. Don’t act all doe eyed. It’ll make dinner longer.”

“For me or for you?” She asked suspiciously.

For me. Because it would take me an hour to scrub Poe’s blood out of the carpet if she actually liked him. But I wasn’t about to admit the weird, hot jealousy percolating in my chest, so I lied. “You can flirt with Poe until you’re blue in the face, but it will only make my mom stretch out this dinner and make us both suffer.”

She unfurled a devilish smile, “You’re totally right. I would really, truly hate to watch you suffer.”

“Now hold on there. I didn’t mean you should—"

My mother had paused ushering everyone into the dining room to stare at us. Her expression muddled and she whispered to Poe to move down a chair. Once we’d all been told our places, Dad stood up from the head of the table. He said the traditional Friday night berakhot prayer at a speed so fast you’d have thought he’d been starved. It was a good time to actually pray for the evening to go by quickly. But it was also a good time to get a glance at the spread in front of us. There was brisket, potatoes, green beans, and salad. C3PO was an excellent cook, so at least we had that going for us. Dad finished and we all started piling food on our plates. 

Poe began grilling the other guest before the brisket even got around the table. “So, Rey. Are you from around here?”

“No,” she said, offering the green beans to my dad. “I’m from Niima Outpost.”

“On Jakku?” I asked.

“Yes, that’s where Niima is,” she said dryly. I shot her a venomous glare that she ignored. “I chose here for my residency. It’s the best area around for family medicine.”

“Why did you pick family?” Poe asked, passing the salad.

She answered, “Because I never had one.” There was a shy pause before she went on, “I was an orphan back in Jakku. I just loved the idea of helping people for their whole life. It’s like making a little family of your own. And I think of a lot of my patients that way; like they’re already a part of my work family.”

I slowed chewing on my potato. I hadn’t known that. It made a lot more sense why she was fighting moving to internal medicine over at the county hospital. And for a second, I felt bad. I could tell her dream wasn’t just to spite me. She wanted the clinic for a bigger reason than just to shove it in my nose that she was the better doctor. 

Poe explained how he joined the military to remember his mother, who’d also been a pilot. I would have been more impressed if I hadn’t heard the story before when Poe was trying to impress other women.

Leia noted the meager amount on Rey’s plate and asked, “Do you like brisket?” 

She nodded, “If it’s meat, I’m in.”

She gave a relieved smile, “Good. 3PO made way too much. I was sort of hoping you’d plumped up to be the size of a sumo wrestler so we didn’t waste food.”

Rey laughed, “I’m sorry to disappoint.”

Poe murmured as he looked her over, “Trust me. You don’t.”

Rey’s face flushed. I cut my potato with more force than necessary. 

My mother explained, “The last girl Ben brought home was a vegetarian. Sweet as could be, but basically only ate green beans.”

Dad asked, “Remember the Scarecrow?”

“Was she before or after Missing Link?” Mom asked.

I scowled, “We really don’t have to talk about this.”

“Before Missing Link,” Mom remembered.

Rey looked puzzled, “Those were all girlfriends?”

Mom purred a thank you to Poe for passing her the salt. “Ben doesn’t bring very many home. But the last one he had—the Scarecrow—well, she had less going on upstairs than a one-story house.”

Dad defended her, barely, “She was nice, though.”

“Before that was Missing Link,” Mom said. “Proof that evolution CAN go in reverse. Easily the hairiest woman I’ve ever seen. She gave Chewie a run for his money.”

“Please stop talking,” I nearly begged, staring up at the ceiling as if trying to will it to fall in on me.

My discomfort clearly brought Rey a sense of joy by the way she chuckled. 

“It doesn’t matter. One day she’ll come home with a nice girl.” My mother paused, eyeing Rey over the daisies with a mischievous grin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, y'all. Not my favorite chapter. Next one will be better and I'll take my time.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all I am not sorry for how long this chapter is. I think the payoff is worth it.

....BEN....

“You cracked.”

“I didn’t crack.”

“She barely had to get the words out of her mouth before you were agreeing to go this week. And you can’t reneg. I’ll deal with the consequences of you blowing it off.”

We stood at the kitchen sink, nearly hip to hip. I took another plate from Rey’s slippery hand to dry. It had been a fight to get my mother to agree to let us clean the dishes, but it was worth it to get Rey away from Poe, who had flirted the rest of the way through dinner. She asked, “What was I supposed to say? Sorry, Leia. You’re super friendly and I technically have no excuse not to come but I just won’t?”

“You fib to me all the time on stuff. Why can’t you when it’s my mom?” I asked, scrubbing a dish with such gusto that she stepped back to avoid getting wet.

“Because I didn’t want to.” 

My sideways glance was skeptical. She set the plate she was drying onto the stack to re-shelve. “Listen, I like your parents. They’re funny, they’re honest… I like them. I still don’t know how they made you, but they’re both great people. So when they want to hang out, I’m going to say yes."

I stopped cleaning my plate. “I’m sorry about your parents. I didn’t know.”

“It’s water under a burnt bridge.”

I slowed my washing. “When was the last time you saw them?”

She thought back. “When I was maybe six?”

I asked, “Do you ever wonder how they are?”

“No.” And that she sounded less confident of, like the answer was always changing

Carefully, she reached over and placed her wet hand on top of mine leaning on the sink. It was warm, like her voice as she said, “I’m sorry they piled on tonight to embarrass you.”

The sincerity threw me off. Having her touch me in a way that didn’t involve violence felt unnatural. But maybe good, too. She gave a good-natured squeeze, then pulled away, her cheeks ruddy and her eyes avoiding mine. “So the Scarecrow, eh?”

“In my defense, she had a really nice set of—”

She slapped a wet hand over my mouth, “Don’t you dare finish that sentence.”

I pried her hand away but kept a hold of it, “I was going to say personality traits.”

“Liar.”

“Fine. I’m sorry.”

She cocked her head, “You never apologize.”

Maturity was never my strong suit. I casually took the pull-out faucet from the sink’s holder. “It was so I could do this without feeling guilty.”

Her brown eyes widened, then narrowed to dangerous slits, “Don’t you dare. I’ll shove my foot so far up your—“

I sprayed her right in the face with the faucet's hose. She jumped back and tried to cover herself, but I nailed her fair and square. She squealed and batted the water away, “You son of a bitch!”

I cackled as I tore off through the house. She ran after me, hot on my heels. We raced through the living room where the others were surprised. I hopped over the sofa and skirted around Chewie, but heard her stumble after me since she probably still had water in her eyes. Turning into the hallways, I took the stairs up to the second floor two at a time. But she was fast when she was angry. She grabbed my ankle and yanked. We both went down in a crash of limbs, her on top of me. 

“Gedoffame,” I grunted, squirming onto my back.

“Oh no you don’t,” she snarled, her legs bracketing my hips in a vise-like hold. She pinned one arm over my head, “You’re going to apologize.”

“Or what?” I dared, my breath ragged.

She opened her mouth for a reply, but nothing came out. For once, she didn’t seem to have an insult on the tip of her tongue. I became impossibly aware of the fact that I was lying under her and our faces were inches apart. 

Her wet breasts rose and fell against the planes of my chest; the rapid thump of her heart pressed against mine. Her brown eyes held my own. Why did she have to look at me like that? Like I was something she wanted to devour. 

My eyes flicked down to her full lips. I rasped lewdly, “You’re wet.”

Mortified, she stammered, “What?”

I glanced down our length, “Your dress is getting my shirt wet.”

She slammed her mouth shut, looking guilty as sin. Jesus Christ. Her brain was right in the gutter with mine. I sat up, leaning back on my elbows against the stairs, a wide grin spreading over my face, “Wait. You were thinking something else.”

Her cheeks flamed red and she sputtered, “Of course not.”

But I just laughed, “You definitely weren’t thinking about my shirt. So what exactly were you embarrassed was wet?”

She rolled her eyes as she hopped up. 

“Do I get three guesses? I bet I can get it in three guesses,” I mocked. She pointedly got to her feet and walking up the stairs instead of following me trotting down them. I cussed under my breath as I switched directions to follow her.

My voice was casual, “Guess number one: Synonym for a cat. Guess number two: a British insult. Guess number three—“

She sighed, “Listen, Solo. You and I both know my….”

“The medical term is vagina,” I suggested.

She opened the first door on the left she came to.

I raced forward and slammed it shut before she could get a decent peak at the bedroom inside.

“My vagina was not what I was thinking about. I was thinking of my wet dress.”

“Whatever makes you sleep better at night, princess,” I said with an ornery grin, raking a glance up her from her toes to her scalp. Good god I hoped she was wet because of me. I was a proud guy that way.

“Stop that,” She insisted.

“Stop what?” I asked innocently.

“Staring down at me. I hate it.”

“Grow taller then,” I shot back.

She pursed her lips, “You get shorter. I’m already tall.”

“And I’m six foot two. I won the height contest. Who cares?”

She crossed her arms under her damp breasts, inadvertently propping them up higher. “Easy for you to say when everyone you date is shorter than you. All men are particular about their inches, no matter where on their body they are.”

I scratched my chin, “It’s better that way anyways. You need a guy who likes you the way you are.”

“Amazing?” She offered.

“Annoying,” I finished. 

She darted forward and grabbed the doorknob.

“Don’t go in there!” I commanded.

But she pretended not to hear me and turned the handle. 

She stood in the doorway for a moment, in awe.

The bedroom clearly hadn’t changed since I was sixteen. There were old photos taped to the wall. Most were of me with braces and acne, stooping to hug friends since I’d grown up a gangling mass of limbs. Swim team trophies adorned the tops of the three book shelves dotting the room. Who the hell had that many books in high school? It didn’t matter since there were posters plastering every other available space. I could barely see the black wall paint. There were the expected bands and posters of models. Clearly mortified, I was hot on her heels. 

“Would you just get out? You’re not even supposed to be up here!”

Rey slid her fingers along the spines of the books. Cormac McCarthy right next to a dozen Stephen King novels. There was a whole row dedicated to Goosebumps right below one centered on high school classics like the Iliad, the Count of Monte Cristo, and Grey’s Anatomy. Then she looked closer at some of the posters. Mingled in with and Gisele Bundchen and Blink 182 were posters of the Morse code alphabet, stenographer alphabet, and shorthand guides. Above the twin bed’s wooden headboard, there were grids with letters and numbers.

Rey grabbed a stuffed ewok from one of the shelves, which I immediately snatched away, putting it back, “Stop touching everything!”

She pointed to the out of place posters, “What’s that about?”

My cheeks darkened. “Would you just leave?”

“If you tell me why you’ve got all these weird posters, I will,” she said, holding up her fingers in the scout’s promise.

I gave in since I knew she’d figure it out anyways. “I went through this… phase, where I was really into steganography.”

She feigned mishearing me, “Stegasaurography?”

I hid a begrudging chuckle, “It means I liked to put secret messages in things. It was fun to see if anyone could find them.”

“Like the first letter of a word down the side of a paragraph? That type of thing?”

To my surprise, I actually gave a genuine smile, “Exactly. I snuck some pretty good insults to my teachers into my homework. I taught a few friends Morse code and we’d tap messages with our pencils to each other during class. And this,” I hopped onto the bed and crawled to the headboard. I pointed to the poster with the letter and number grid, “This is a Polybius square. It’s a coding system that the Greeks used. You can use it with anything since it’s number based. How many different colored M&M’s are in a bowl can spell out enough letters to make a word. There are tons of others. I loved transposition ciphers and straddling checkerboards.” 

“I’m sure you wanted to straddle a checkerboard with old Cindy there,” She thumbed Crawford’s poster nearby.

I got down and flopped on my side. “Like your room wasn’t filled with boy band posters.”

“Au contraire, mon frère. I was a classy young gal. Sports Illustrated was more my thing.” She flopped onto the small bed and glanced out the casement window, abutting a trellis. “I also didn’t have the same convenient access to get boys up to my room.”

I smirked, “Yea. The window was pretty handy—until Zorii Bliss accidentally snuck into my parent’s room instead of mine. I was grounded for 6 months. That was the first and last girl to sneak into the house. ” 

She folded her legs under her like a little kid. “I was a foot taller than all the other girls—no boobs, braces; so boys weren’t exactly throwing rocks at my window to start with.”

I sat up on my elbow, nearly brushing against her knee on the small bed. “Well, at least you’ve got those legs.”

Flirty Rey was fun, but she still slapped my arm—none too painlessly. I reached up and cupped her chin, inspecting her for a long moment. “Ya know, I take it back. The face may not be too bad either. Got the right number of eyes, a nose with both holes in it, and,” I ran a thumb over her lower lip. Ever so slightly, she opened her mouth, “You even got teeth too. Not too shabby for a Jakku girl.”

She bit my thumb hard enough to make me wince.

“Christ, woman,” I growled as I pulled away. 

She burst into laughter and snatched my hand back into hers, “I’m sorry!”

God damn, it hurt. “You left a bite mark!”

She pressed a kiss to my thumb. Her lips were warm but brief. Her smile softened. “There. All fixed.”

Then tension between us shifted from playful to something else. Something I didn’t understand but I wanted to. Desperately. The heaviness, the hunger, seemed inescapable.

Rey shifted her legs to unfold them. Extended, they took up half the bed. With bare calf and thigh easily accessible, I was tempted to look down. Instead, I watched as she swallowed, then worried the side of her bottom lip between her teeth. 

I knew then that it was Rey at her most vulnerable. Her shy expression was rusty and nervous. And not for a second longer did I want her to think I wasn’t interested. Fuck if it wasn’t worth her being able to hold it against me that in that moment, I wanted nothing more than to find out what she tasted like.

I reached up and cupped the base of her neck. Slow, not to startle her, I pulled her down until her face was a breath away from mine. She licked her lips and I almost swore they touched mine. Forget weaknesses. Forget who started it. 

Our lips connected, then connected again. It was like prepping for a fluke. Every time was as good as the last. Our mouths opened and our tongues played until I was reaching out to yank her against me. Her mouth was a goddamn treasure trove of fun things to explore.

She fisted the front of my shirt, keeping me close. I groaned into her mouth as I maneuvered her hips to bracket mine. My dick hardened like a rock at the feeling of her wiggling against me. Her neck was perfect in my grip as she let me keep her close. Just in case she changed her mind. Just in case she could. But if she felt how I felt, there was no chance she wasn’t drowning. Her fingers explored my chest and my arms and my throat and my jaw as they landed on cradling my face. 

I had messed around with my share, but no one. No one. Had this type of appreciation for a good make-out session. It was a goddamn art form the way we responded to each other. How we were close, but not too handsy. How we savored and lingered at all the good parts of each other. I teased her mouth mercilessly, but all it took was a good smile on those lips of hers to convince me I was the one desperate. She was delivering a mind-melding, no-holds-barred kiss when there was a rap on the staircase’s banister. 

Mom called up, “Hey, you guys coming down to clean this mess up?”

Rey jerked away as if I was made of fire. 

“Yup! One sec!” She called. Hopping off the bed. 

She went to the door, one hand on the handle. She couldn’t even look at me. “If you tell one soul about this, I’ll rip your arms off and beat you with them.”

I just grinned at her, still dazed. “No worries, sweetheart. I’ll keep it to myself.”

She hesitated, like she wanted to say something. But she chose to shut the door. I listened to her pad back downstairs and grumble an apology for the wet mess that we’d made on the stairs and through the kitchen.


	8. Chapter 8

Murder. Murder was what propelled me to storm through the clinic. I’d been tempted to just leave in the middle of an exam, but I knew with my flashing temper that if I didn't take a moment to calm down and exert my energy, I'd actually launch myself over Solo's desk and strangle him with his stethoscope. It'd be a shame to kill a man that handsome, but god did he deserve it after what he’d pulled. I'd been in Mrs. Beru’s follow up when I got his email on my phone. I'd stewed through the rest of the exam, trying to think of a creative place to hide his body. He probably wouldn't even fit in a dumpster since he was tall unless I folded him like an accordion.

Phone clutched in one hand and the other balled in a fist, I opened the door to the office portion of the clinic. Two nurses ducked into a nearby room to avoid me. Blowing fallen hair from my ponytail out of my eyes, I stormed through the hallway to his office and wrenched the door open. Sitting behind a massive, cluttered desk was the dark haired, reckless bane of my existence. 

Solo didn't bother glancing up from his computer, his voice husky, "I see you've yet to master the art of knocking."

"How about you master the art of not being such a gargantuan douche bag."

A long dimple quirked in his cheek, "HR warned you about using that word, didn't they?" Ignoring me, he clacked away at the keyboard with his long fingers. Good hands weren't a thing I made a note to focus on, but they were huge and masculine. They'd be the perfect size to cup my whole--

"What do you want, Rey?"

And just like that, I remembered whose hands I was fantasizing touching me. I took a few steps forward and slid my phone across his desk. 

"What is this email?"

He spared it a look before focusing back on his computer screen. "You can read, right? You know what it says."

"You canceled my lunch."

"Luke wants to meet today and he’s more important than a lunch date with your buddy."

I wanted to punch that stupid jaw and blacken those brown eyes. "It's my goddamn schedule, Solo. You can't just go around changing it without telling me."

"I did tell you. Here's the email," He said, holding my phone up between two fingers with a mocking smile.

I snatched it back from him defensively. “I had a real meeting, you jerk!”

Solo gave a bored sigh, "I'm sorry that you're obligated to prioritize your work relationships."

"I'm going to prioritize your teeth if you don't stop changing my schedule without asking. We’ve talked about this."

It had been three days and Solo still acted like nothing happened. Like he hadn’t kissed me so thoroughly I thought I was drowning. Like he hadn’t thrown my world off its axis with that clever mouth of his.

I really, really hated him. 

He strolled around the clinic like nothing was wrong and he didn’t have a care in the world. Meanwhile, I was still rubbing my lips with the back of my hand, trying to get the taste of him off just so I could concentrate on my patients. 

And it wasn’t helping at all that we’d been working overtime trying to impress Luke. He’d been busy working on wrapping some paperwork up, so he’d left us to take his regular appointments. 

“Who was lunch with?”

The question startled me. “Huh?”

Solo had stopped clacking at his computer. “Who were you having lunch with that you didn’t want to cancel on?”

“You should know since you’re the one who cancelled it.”

“It was just a blocked-out lunch hour that said meeting in your schedule. It didn’t specify. Who were you going to meet?”

“Why’re you being so nosy?”

His expression hardened, “Was it Poe?”

I wanted to laugh but decided toying with him would be much more fun. “Your mom respects him.”

“She has bad taste.”

“Are you saying that as a direct byproduct of it?”

“Shut up.”

“Fine.” I turned on my heels and left. 

He was right behind me, nearly bumping me in his effort to catch up. “That doesn’t mean you still shouldn’t tell me who lunch was going to be with.”

“You care an awful lot,” I suspected, walking down the hall.

“I just want to send flowers to the poor schlub that I cancelled on to show my penance.”

“Ha! You! Penance! In the same sentence!”

“Just tell me.”

"Still sound jealous."

"I'm not. Tell me."

“Get lost.”

“I won’t stop bugging you until you do.”

“There’s literally a whole supply room full of scalpels that say otherwise.”

He grabbed my arm and yanked me into an open exam room. He slammed the door behind us and had me backed up against it in a flash. 

“Now this is familiar,” he damn near purred, his forehead pressed to mine.

My lungs felt like bursting with each breath I took. How did he tie me into knots like this? How did he know exactly what tone to use to make me want to melt right into him at the exact same time I planned to slap him? This guy was going to steal my job and here I was begging myself to not lick him to death.

Revenge was the only way to stop this insanity. I slid my hands up over his chest and looped my arms around his neck. “See, there’s this guy. He’s gorgeous and has the best body I’ve ever seen.”

Solo growled at me. Actually growled.

I grinned, “I love getting under him, seeing what makes his gears turn. I get him all oiled up and he can take me places you never can.”

“Doesn’t sound like Poe to me.”

“It’s not Poe.”

“Then who?” He demanded, his lips in a furious line.

I leaned up to whisper in the shell of his hear, “The Ford Falcon, you idiot.”

He shoved away from the door like it was poison and I cackled. “You should have seen your face!” I held my belly I was laughing so hard at him. “Your dad asked me to drop by and help him with a capacitor.”

“You’re a piece of work, sweetheart,” he said, putting his hands on his hips like if he didn’t they’d go around my neck.

I opened the door, “See you for lunch with Luke.”

….Ben…

Just as she was about to leave, Maz stopped her, “Hey Rey. Luke is ordering Chinese for the office. What kind do you want?”

“Kung Pao chicken please,” she said, then left to go do work.

“What about you, Ben?” Maz asked, looking harried. 

I wanted a bucket of ice water and a Prozac if I had to keep being around Rey. I noticed the tension in Maz’s voice and asked, “You okay?” 

“I just need to put this order in soon.”

An evil thought came to mind. “Anyone else you need to grab or is this it?” I asked, taking the note pad from her hands.

“You’re the last.”

I tapped the pad against the door jam. “Let me call it in. You’ve got enough on your plate.”

Maz’s face relaxed with relief, “You’re sure you have time?”

“Absolutely,” I said, giving her a confident smile. I grabbed my phone out of my pocket and started dialing the number to the Chinese takeout place we ordered from at least once a week. 

“Hello, I need to get an order for Kung Pao chicken, but how spicy can you make it?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They're idiots.


	9. Chapter 9

…Ben….  
The smell of the Chinese delivery alerted me before Maz could that food was in the break room. I still needed to finish up with my last patient who needed x-rays. Since there were two patients before us that needed to get x-rays completed, I decided to give the tired mom a break and walk around the clinic with my little patient, BeeBee. 

“Did you steal an infant to sacrifice?” Rey asked the moment I came into the break room.

“Nah. She’s stew meat,” I said, looking down at her with a grin. The kiddo in my arms was about one and a half and had thick, jet black hair and almond eyes, just like her mother. “Are you stew meat, little lady?”

She gave me a drool-filled nod. What a bullshitter. She didn’t know what I was saying. I playfully clucked, “Your mommy said it’s almost time to feed you. You’re going to eat mushy cabbage that’ll make your poop stink. And maybe some corn just for some texture variation. But guess who doesn’t have to change your diaper? Me! That’s right. You get to make up some real nice gas for mommy and daddy. And Dr. Ben is going to be miles and miles away from that smell, won’t he?”

BeeBee bobbled her head. 

“You really need to work on your childcare skills,” Rey said, turning around from looking over the spread of food.

I rolled my eyes, “She’s the equivalent of a twenty-three pound Etch-A-Sketch right now.”

“That’s not true, is it?” Rey cooed to her. “You’re going to remember your weird doctor and start having night terrors about medicine by the age of nine.”

I snorted, “Closer to seven.”

Her expression warmed. “Nah. She’s going to be great. Look at that smile.”

“It’s the face she makes when she’s farting,” I said, patting her diaper. 

“Then maybe I’m just a fan of gassy ladies,” Rey offered, striping a finger down her button of a nose. She blubbered a happy squeak. 

“It wouldn’t surprise me at all if you checked yes on a box for something like that.”

“I’d say that was mean, but look what great company I’d have,” she said wistfully. 

I hiked BeeBee higher on my hip. “She’s got a ton in common with you too; barely understanding object permanence, diaper changes, needing a nap…”

Rey stuck her tongue out at me. I grinned at her. The moment seemed… easy. 

Kalonia peered in the doorway. “Hey, x-ray is free. Mind if I steal Miss BeeBee from you?”

I gave her a final squeeze and handed her over. Rey waved and BeeBee returned it with her pudgy little fingers. 

Once we were alone, I asked, “So are you still coming to the party on Saturday?”

“I told your mom I would.”

“You can still wiggle out of it if you want,” I reminded. 

She hopped up to sit on the counter and kicked her feet like a kid. “I’m not reneging.”

“You say that, but you haven’t been to one of my mom’s super formal parties for all of her retired political friends before.”

“Free booze and food? No thanks. I’ll pass,” she said sarcastically. 

“Lots of stuffy suited politicians who will want to talk war games and tell stories about when they were in the service.”

“Will Poe be there?” She asked.

She might as well have been waving a red flag at a bull. The idea of her with Poe made my jaw clench. I wasn’t even sure that I’d wanted to bring it up, but I had to say it. “You’d really want to talk to him after what happened in my room?”

The calm that we had was replaced with thick, angry tension. We hadn’t talked about it. We’d successfully been tiptoeing around it. I’d also been fantasizing about it every time I went to bed.

She spat, “That was a mistake.”

“We made that mistake for several minutes. And if I recall, you seemed to like it.”

“I didn’t.”

“You’re such a liar!”

“Don’t yell at me!” She yelled back. 

I hated her. And I hated that she was right. I took a deep breath and said through clenched teeth, “Fair. But don’t act like you didn’t like it.”

“Fine! I did,” she fumed. “Now can we move on?”

“No.”

She hopped off the counter and strode towards me. “What do you want me to say? It was a good kiss and I’d have kept doing it if it weren’t for it being with you.”

I moved a step closer. “Oh I forgot how pleasant you are, sweetheart. You’re just a ray of goddamn sunshine—acting like you don’t like me for any other reason than you know I’m going to win the clinic.”

“You actually think you’re going to win?” She squeaked a laugh and slapped my chest, “Solo, you’ve got the bedside manner of an on-fire dumpster. Some of us care about these patients and the clinic beyond just something to steal from me.”

“I can hardly steal what’s rightfully mine. And you talking about empathy is a bit rich considering you never waste an opportunity to remind me I’m some awful monster for actually competing for a position that I’ve wanted since I was a kid!"

Her brown eyes bore holes into mine. “Well I’m not giving up on my dream!”

I moved close enough to almost bump her chest. “Neither am I!”

She surged forward and kissed me, effectively cutting off the argument. It only took a second for the shock to wear off. We fused together, her fingers sliding into my hair and my arms curling around her waist. Any thoughts, any anger I had, was evaporated and I was left with just her. The whole world revolved around where our lips met. 

This was different than the first time. The first was all about curiosity. This was knowing. Knowing how sweet she would taste and the way her plush lips gave to my firmer ones. Her teeth nipped my bottom lip and I fisted the back of her scrubs in response, keeping her pinned to me. Heat built in me at every point we touched. 

There was a loud cough and we jumped apart.

Luke stood in the doorway, a muddled expression on his face. “So…. Are you guys going to meet me for lunch?”

We both shifted uncomfortably and nodded.

“Good. We all need to talk.”


	10. Chapter 10

…REY….

Luke was just sitting down at his desk for our lunch meeting when I let out a shocked screech. Fire. Scorching fire filled my mouth the moment my kung pao chicken landed on my tongue. I whirled around to face Solo and sent a look of pure misery his way. He’d somehow tampered with my lunch.

He gave a guilty smile back, then grabbed his mug. He took a sip and did a spit take, spewing a mist of water all over his takeout.

I’d poured about a quarter cup of salt in his cup right before he’d come into the break room. My mouth was still blazing, but I was at least satisfied I’d gotten fantastic revenge. My victorious smile faded the moment I saw Luke’s disappointed face. 

“I’m so sorry. I—I don’t know what happened,” Solo fibbed, side eyeing me as he used napkins to clean up the salty water from his desk. 

“I imagine you do,” Luke said, looking between us skeptically. “But this is exactly why I wanted to talk. I heard about the antics you two have been playing from an old friend and you should both be ashamed.”

“Lando Calrissian,” Solo mumbled. 

Luke said, “I thought we were done with this ridiculous childish rivalry.”

“We are, sir,” I said, cheeks flushing, mouth still burning from the extra spicy chicken. I’d gulped down most of my own drink.

“Are you sure you’re done? Because I have no clue where you two stand. Neither of you listened to me, which makes me think neither of you truly want to take over the clinic.”

“I do,” I insisted.

“Then prove it. No fighting. No digs at each other, no messing around. I’d always wanted it to go to one of you, but I’m looking at a family medicine doctor that I worked with a while back since I can’t trust you two to follow my directions.”

“Wait—who?”

“Sir, we’ve been working our asses off for weeks. You’d really bring in someone new?”

Luke was casual as he opened up his Chinese container. “I warned you two to stop fighting.”

“Who is it?” I asked. 

“It doesn’t matter. Point is, either you guys figure out how to get along, or I will send you both to county. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir,” we said in unison. 

“As penance for not listening to me, you both need to find time to clean up the file room.”

Solo crossed his arms. “Can’t we get one of the nurses to do that? Or the resident?”

Luke cocked a grey brow, “You think you’re above organizing paperwork?”

“Not at all,” he said in a tone saying the exact opposite.

“It’s not a problem,” I said. “We’ll have it cleaned out.”

“And do it together,” Luke reminded. “It’s both of your responsibilities.”

We gave mirroring miserable nods. 

Luke clapped his hands together and then grabbed his pair of chopsticks. “Alright. Now that business is over, let’s talk about that kiss.”

The ensuing awkward silence lasted approximately an eon. I was born, raised, lived, and died in the time it took Solo to croak out an uncomfortable answer. “We’re figuring it out.”

I blurted, “We are?”

Luke popped a shrimp in his mouth and chewed, looking between us with a thoughtful expression. 

“We are,” Solo said matter of fact, reaching over to take a swig of my drink since his was tainted. I allowed it because I was still in shock. He went on, “She’s coming with me to my parent’s big yearly party for all of my mother’s old political friends.”

“—At Leia’s request,” I clarified.

“You’ll have to give your mother my apologies again for missing it,” Luke said. 

“I will.”

And just like that, Luke started in on a tangent about the latest flu strain that was set to hit us hard this winter. I stayed lost in thought, wondering exactly where I stood and realized that for once, I really didn’t know what I wanted. All I knew was that as mad as Solo made me, I wanted him to kiss me again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Zero chance these ding-dongs listen to Luke and stop bickering.


	11. Chapter 11

Two minutes into the party, I realized my rookie mistake. The heels I’d worn were higher than I remembered, and I was already in pain. I was used to being on my feet all day, but not at an angle. My plan wasn’t to stay long. I’d say hello to Leia, make a cursory walk around the party, maybe grab a drink, then call it a day and go home. When I’d agreed to come, I hadn’t been thinking of how exhausted I was going to be after a full day of looking up noses, casting broken bones, and writing prescriptions. 

The crowd was mostly Leia’s old gang of diplomats and Air Force officials that were already knee-deep in drinks and food. Han’s beloved Lazy Boy was gone and the mementos from when Solo was just a tike were absent from the mantle. C-3PO had done an excellent job setting the house up to give plenty of space to mingle.

Just when I was starting to search out the table full of hors d’ouvres in the dining room, I saw Solo swaggering over. The black sweater underneath his suit jacket looked soft. Some primal bit of my brain wanted to run my hands all over it and feel the strong planes of his chest underneath.

“You’re looking very average tonight,” he said, perusing my figure with his dark eyes.

“And you look like dog shit,” I lied cheerfully. “I figured it was a matter of time before I ran into you. How’s being the world’s biggest momma’s boy?”

“Not bad. How’s being an orphan?” He shot back.

The comment rolled off my shoulders. There was business we had to handle. “We didn’t get to talk after the meeting with Luke. What are we going to do?”

“What do you mean what are we going to do?”

I tapped my heel. “We’re going to have to partner up if either of us stand a chance at getting the clinic.”

“How do I know you’ll really stop messing with me?”

“Because I’m not interested in losing my chance at the clinic over some stupid spite match. And in this case, we don’t have a choice.”

“Fine,” He begrudgingly agreed, “We’ll just have to trust each other.”

It sounded impossible, but there was no other option if we wanted to keep our chances alive.

He said, “We need to figure out who Luke’s bringing in as a ringer, too. That way we can neutralize our mutual threat.”

“So it’s agreed? We’re teammates until Luke agrees it’s just one of us?”

He held out a long-fingered hand. I took it in my own and we shook on it.

“So… what now?” I asked, genuinely unsure of how to act. 

He stuck his hands in his pockets. “I don’t know.”

“Do you want to start making a list of who Luke’s third choice is?”

He looked around the party. “You know what? Let’s just… give it a night. Practice being teammates.”

It sounded so absurd, but I went along with it. “Fine. How do you suggest we do that?”

“A game.”

“Because that will surely get us out of being competitive,” I said dryly.

He grabbed my purse from my shoulder.

“Hey! What’re you doing?”

He let out a confident “aha!” as he found my prescription pad and a pen. 

“That’s mine you know,” I grumbled snatching the dark green purse back, but he was busy writing something down. 

After a moment, he handed the paper back. In his cramped, tall writing it read: Chandler, magician, haberdasher, …

He explained, “For every topic here, we have to get a business card or a contact name.”

“Cartographer?” I read aloud. “It’s 2020! Who the hell has the contacts for a cartographer?”

He gave look around the room and suddenly pinched my side, “Four o’clock.”

I turned my head slightly and stifled a laugh at a woman’s hat. The woman was old enough to be the Crypt Keeper’s wife and wore an ornate hat. It had grey feathers upon feathers all sticking out in different directions. I whispered, “Did she pluck a whole chicken?”

Solo shrugged, “Let’s find out.”

I balked as he pulled me by the hand through the crowd to stand in front of the old woman.

He flashed a charming smile, “Eggscuse me ma’am. I wanted to tell you how nice I beak your hat looks.”

Her wrinkled lips smiled, “Thank you, young man.”

I dug my fingernails into Solo’s forearm to stop from giggling. Catching onto his game, I added, “I flight get one like that myself after seeing it on you.”

The woman was oblivious as she adjusted the brim, “You don’t think it’s too gaudy?”

“I caw it from across the room and it fit right in,” he assured.

“I goose some might think it’s too much, but I think it’s perfect,” I agreed.

The woman beamed at the pair, “Well thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Any chance you remember the hat shop that you bought it from?”

She recited an address that I wrote down on the notepad next to haberdashery.

“Thanks for the tip. It’d be worth the big bill to not get something made so cheep.”

“Any time, dears,” she said obliviously.

“Excuse us,” he said, ushering me along by the small of my back. The moment we were out of ear range, we began cackling.

I held my stomach to stop the cramping, “You’re so bad!”

“I think you mean ‘so good.’ Cause that, sweetheart, was talent,” he said.

I let out an unlady-like snort, “Something like that.”

And so for the next half hour, we milled around the room, rubbing elbows. Since they were all of his parents’ friends, Solo had introduced me with ease and we’d struck up weird conversations with them to find contact information for the odd jobs that we had on our list. Thankfully, we played each other’s foil, as if it were totally natural to discuss if anyone knew a local ichthyologist for my imaginary ill goldfish. 

We finished up with a former undersecretary with most of the list crossed off. She’d had a great name for a taxidermist for me to use. Solo handed me a flute of champagne as we looked around for our next mark. “That was a real masterpiece, sweetheart.”

“It’s truly a gift to be this full of shit,” I said, taking a sip.

He waved at a faraway acquaintance, then turned back to the paper. “So what’s next on the list?”

“Herpatologist. And before you ask, it’s not a doctor of herpes.”

“Har har har,” he grumbled sarcastically. “Snakes. Why’d it have to be snakes?”

“You’re not afraid of them, are you?”

He shrugged, stuffing one hand into his slack’s pocket. “I’m not afraid. I just…”

“Am a total baby?”

“You know what, Rey?” He started. Then we were interrupted. 

A hand curled over his broad shoulder. It was his father. That wry grin was always a welcome sight. Han said, “I’ve been looking all over for you, kid. Should have known he’d be with you, Rey.”

It was impossible not to feel a surge of happiness as he scooped me up into a hug. “How are you, sir?”

“Better at knowing you’re here.” He glanced at the list in my hand. His brows drew together. “Do I want to know?”

“Nope.”

He looked over my shoulder, “Oh great. My wife’s having words with Tarkin. Sometimes I think she invites people just to yell at them.”

“You should go save him,” Solo said.

“Right. Wish me luck,” he said, patting my back as he moved on. 

I downed the rest of my champagne and handed the empty glass to 3PO who happened to be passing by. Solo grabbed me a fresh one. “So this isn’t so bad, is it?”

I couldn’t suppress my smile. “I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but I’m actually having fun.”

“Maybe we’re not so bad at being teammates.”

“Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves.” I pointed to the kitchen. “Come on. I need sustenance.”

Though there was plenty of food laid out in the dining room, I could use a break from all the noise and shuffling of the party. The kitchen was empty but for the trays of extra food, ready to go out to refill dishes as the night progressed. The first thing I gravitated towards was a plate of bonbons. I shoved one in my mouth ungracefully. The thing tasted divine and I let out a throaty moan of appreciation. Solo swallowed hard and pointedly looked away from me.

We sat down across from each other at the kitchen island, the din of the voices and clinking glasses muffled by the shut door. I reached out to try a crab puff. As with everything that 3PO made, it was delicious. Solo took my purse from the counter and started raking through it.

“Geddoudda’der!” I said through a mouthful of crab puff.

He didn’t listen as he rummaged around. Then he let out a wolf whistle. “Well hello there,” he said, pulling the magnum condom he’d given me what felt like an eon ago.

I defended myself, “I haven’t cleaned out my purse since the date where you planted that in my coat pocket.”

“Oh yea? You sure you didn’t keep it as a memento?”

“Right. Because I’m so fond of you,” I said sarcastically. But to my horror, a little piece of me began to wonder if maybe he was right. He was growing on me like a fungus when he wasn’t intentionally trying to ruin my career.

I snatched the condom away and stuffed it back in my purse, which I whisked off the table in case he decided to investigate further. His nosiness was going to be the death of me. And so was the way he was looking at me.

“Would you stop staring? I haven’t grown a second head.”

“Which is a shame since you might grow a brain,” he shot back, a little smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

My eyes involuntarily stared at them for a moment too long. Irritated he was making my stomach percolate with awareness, I grabbed a peanut from the nearby cheese plate and threw it at him. 

He caught it easily in his mouth.

“Hey!” I squawked in surprise.

The ornery grin he gave transformed his whole face. I threw another peanut at him to make the feelings welling inside me stop. Of course he caught it again.

Chewing, he noted, “I’m pretty good at this.”

“Well it’s hard to miss when you’re this close.”

“Shut up and let me have a win, Rey.”

“Fine. You want proof? Throw one at me. There’s no way I can miss.”

He shrugged like he didn’t believe me and grabbed a peanut. I opened my mouth expectantly and Solo lobbed it directly into my cleavage, where it fell into my dress. He laughed his head off at the sight of me trying to cover myself while trying to fish it out. 

“You’re rotten, you know.”

“You like it, you know.”

“Oh grow up. I don’t like you at all.”

“Liar.”

“Nerf-herder.”

“That was uncalled for,” he said, grabbing another peanut. “Now let’s actually try this time.”

I got into position, my mouth open, braced against the table. With the flick of his elbow, he threw it directly into my mouth. 

I hopped off my stool and did a little dance, including lots of fist bumps. I was grinning like a loon, still celebrating, when two hands grabbed my waist. 

Solo hauled me up against his large frame and before I could process what was happening, he planted his lips against mine.

I didn’t even think of trying to pull away. I was too absorbed in wishing it wouldn’t end. He darted his tongue in to taste me. The same mouth that made me want to screech was melting me into some brainless heap of hormones. I slid my fingers into his soft black hair and responded to his fervent kisses with equal enthusiasm. 

His hands were everywhere at once, pulling little moans from me while I clung to him just to survive it. He knew exactly what he was doing to me according to the smile I felt on his lips. It was overwhelming to be so vulnerable in his arms, so I started my payback. My hands slid down his chest, curling my fingers in his belt buckle. He grunted and pinned my hips back to the island, pressing one thigh into the vee of my legs just right. Just like that, I was back on my heels, lost and not even caring my dress was hiked up. He peppered my jaw with kisses as he moved over to my neck. I let out a whine as he nipped the sensitive skin right below my ear. 

I was panting when Ben finally pulled away. His dark eyes bored into mine. My voice cracked, “I don’t think teammates do this.”

He nodded, his nose brushing mine. “Yes, they do.”

Then his lips were back on mine. I clutched myself to him. If there was any air between us, we were going to figure out this was an awful idea and I wasn’t ready for that to happen just yet. I rocked into his thigh and felt victory when his fingers tensed in a bruising hold of my hips, like it was too much. I was dizzy with the taste of him. 

Some little niggling part of my brain was panicked in a way I couldn’t ignore anymore. This wasn’t the place or time and I was worried if he kept running his hands over me like he was doing, I was going to forget that I should care. It might have been five minutes. It might have been an hour. I lost track of time. But eventually, reluctantly, I gave a final, thorough kiss and pulled away. 

He looked so lost. He rasped, “That was…”

“I know,” I said softly, understanding him completely. 

He looked relieved I wasn’t going to bother denying it. His mouth was Kryptonite and I didn’t have it in me to pretend any longer that I hadn’t wanted him. I was burning with the temptation to reach for his lips again.

His expression hardened. “We’re not going to talk about it right now. But we are going to talk about this. Understand?”

I swallowed and nodded. He unwound his arms from around me. Disappointment hit me that he was going out of arm’s reach, even though I was the one who had done the separating.

I groped around for my purse and started towards the kitchen door. 

“Rey?”

I turned around.

“I’ll see you Monday.” It almost sounded like a threat.

Cheeks flushed, I gave a small smile and left the kitchen. I breezed past Leia and Poe, even though she called after me. I couldn’t talk to her after what I’d done and wanted to do with her son in her own kitchen. So instead, I made a quick exit. That night, I was left to wonder how I was going to manage seeing Ben on Monday and what kind of a teammate I wanted to be.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not to spoil anything, but just remember the rating.

Dread had coated my stomach on Monday morning when I came to the clinic. I’d spent the whole weekend wondering what I wanted to happen between Ben and I. On one hand, there was a real chance he would snatch my dream job from out of my hands.  
On the other hand, I couldn’t think when he kissed me.

And if all I wanted were kisses, then it was an easy decision to make. I’d go with focusing on my career in a heartbeat. But there was something about him—even when we were bickering, that made me want more. And I had a feeling in my gut that thought he wanted more, too. It’s just that neither of us knew what that would look like.

I steeled myself for an awkward day of trying to run from Ben every time I saw him. But instead of ignoring me or being overly interested, Ben arrived with coffees to entice the nurses to be on his side and didn’t get me one—so things were back to normal. With one exception. The new overly professional politeness that Ben showed me caused a few raised eyebrows. I followed his lead and made idle small talk in front of the nurses about plans for the week and patients on the schedule. I was beginning to wonder if he wasn’t just playing it cool in front of others but had somehow forgot kissing the daylights out of me in the kitchen. And I wasn’t sure which one I wanted to be true. 

A day of sinus infections and sprains later, I was finally wrapping everything up. My stomach rumbled loudly in the empty exam room. I’d worked through lunch so that I could go home on time for once. My last patient for the day had just left and I was filling out my prescription pad when the door open.

I turned to see Ben standing there. “Hi.”

“Hi.”

“What can I help you with?” I asked, keeping the same professional tone we’d been using all day.

He raised a chart, “I could use some advice.”

“Sure.”

He handed it to me. It was a file for Garven Dreis, who had a nasty wrist break. I started flipping through. It was a crush injury, so the tissue was more extensively damaged than if it had been a clean break. But the fractured bits of wrist bone weren’t entirely pulverized. The question was if he needed pins, or if he would thrive with just a cast.

My brain froze entirely when I felt Ben’s arms wrap around my waist and his face drop to the crook of my shoulder. I melted back against him, relieved he hadn’t forgotten me.

I fake reprimanded, “You’re distracting me from consulting.”

“I know.”

“Do you even want me to help you?”

“I already referred him to the county hospital for surgery, but I wanted a second opinion since you’re better at ortho than me.”

I craned my neck around to see him. “Was that a compliment, Solo?”

A twinge of red started to creep up his cheeks. “Well you don’t have to get a big head about it.”

“I’m sorry. Can you repeat that? I’m having trouble hearing you over the ‘being better at you than something’ part.”

He rolled his eyes and tried to pull away but I grabbed his arms to keep him in place. I chuckled, “I’m sorry. I’m still not used to this ‘nice’ thing.”

He laughed. “Clearly.”

“But I’m getting better. Your coffee was left unattended in the break room and I didn’t put anything in it.”

“I’ll sign you up for sainthood,” He said dryly.

I grinned up at him. It felt natural to be playful instead of at each other’s throats. It made me wonder if we could always be like this. Because this wasn’t a guy I’d mind working with every day. This was a guy I could see owning a clinic with. Relaxing with. Coming home to.  
The idea popped into my head so quick that I snapped my spine straight.

Ben pulled the chart from my fingers and set it on the counter. “We should talk.”

I turned to face him, trying to unscramble my thoughts. “Okay.”

“We should discuss the way for us to both stay at the clinic.”

My breath hitched, “You thought of something?”

“I think we need to reconsider what’s been standing in front of us this whole time. It’s the obvious and easiest solution. I want you to seriously consider it: I’ll take the title and you’ll work under me. But I’ll treat you like a partner and we’ll have the same wage and split patients 50/50.”

My jaw dropped at the insult. “Are you serious?”

He shrugged his broad shoulders, “This way, we both get what we want.”

I asked cautiously, “And what do you think it is that I want?”

“To stay with your patients. You said they’re like family to you,” he said.

I closed my eyes to stop from blasting his head off with my hate laser vision. How could someone be so smart and yet so dumb? My voice was measured. “Solo, I don’t want to be employed by you.”

“But you wouldn’t be, really. It’s a technicality. I’ll even give you control over which patients to pick. You can have anything you want.”

“Except my name on the front door.”

“Rey, there can only be one of us running this place. We bicker too much about little things to get through managing this place daily. Just come with me.”

He put a hand for me to take. I knocked it away, furious he was being so obtuse. “I’m not settling for anything less than my name on the front door.” 

His expression, which had been confused before, was now shutting down. In its place was a cool, detached look that I hated. “You’re not even considering it.”

“I have thought about this forward and backward, Solo. I’ve thought of making lists that designate who has responsibility for specific parts of the business. Or if we could split the clinic in half so we each have small practices under our control but in the same building. But each time, it’s the same conclusion: one of us has to leave. Would you agree to that offer if I proposed the same terms to you? Put my name on all the legal paperwork, but give you a handshake agreement to help make decisions and pick clients?”

He let out a soft, frustrated sound. “Fine. You’ve made your position clear.”

“Thank you for understanding.”

There was a long, uncomfortable silence.

He cleared his throat. “And when it comes to us?”

I blew out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding. “I… don’t know. It seems like a bad idea.”

“Awful, really.”

“I couldn’t think of worse timing.”

“I mean, such a little chance of it working out.”

My hand wandered up his chest. “What if we just need to get it out of our system?”

“What if it doesn’t go away?”

“What happens when one of us gets picked?”

“Lot of questions.” He pointed out.

“Not a lot of answers.”

“Maybe we don’t have to think about that right now.”

“It’ll just get more complicated if we don’t.”

He dropped his forehead to rest on mine. “I think we’re well past complicated, princess.”

“I don’t like complicated.”

“I hate it.”

“I loathe it.”

His hand settled on my hip. “I think I loathe you.”

“I think I loathe you a little, too.”

Solo leaned down and kissed me. My fingers slid into his black hair, forcing his mouth to never leave mine. This was the moment that I loved; when we felt how the other felt without using our words. Words complicated and got in the way. But this feeling was honesty on fire.

Massive hands grabbed me greedily through my scrub top. I pushed into his touch. He gripped my hair and gave a stern tug, pulling me away from his lips. I whined in protest but that whine turned to a crude moan as his teeth nipped at my throat. It wasn’t gentle in the slightest and I was positive I’d bruise, but I needed it. I needed to feel something permanent in this tornado. This was different than before. It felt a little like revenge and I loved it.

I slid my hands down his broad chest to follow the thin line of coarse, short hair trailing into his scrub bottoms. After fumbling with the draw strings, I undid them enough to slip into his boxers. He groaned loudly, his eyes squeezing shut at the first stroke, then he gritted his teeth, as if the pleasure was so intense that it hurt. I could feel his pulse hammering through his length quicker and quicker with each motion. He suddenly snatched my wrist. The confusion was clear in my expression. Eyes on mine, his voice was ragged, “Not coming like that. Not without you.”

Then his big palms were sliding down my torso and I couldn’t hear anything but thundering of my own heart. I looked down between us to see his hand had disappeared under my pants material. He cupped me inside my panties and I froze. He let out a string of filthy curses under his breath. Replying was impossible since he dragged his knuckle through my wetness. He used long, calloused fingers to fuck me in the most deliciously slow rhythm. I dropped my forehead onto his shoulder and pleaded for more.

“Exam table,” he ordered.

There was no point denying a command I wanted to follow. I nodded mutely, shuffling over.

The moment I sat on top of it, he lunged for my lips. He tilted my head up and to the side to get the best angle for the deepest kiss. His tongue delved into my mouth, licking every inch of it. 

He touched my neck, forcing my focus on to his eyes. They were so dilated that there was no brown left; only black, hungry orbs. Without saying a word, his expression told me everything. I leaned up to kiss him hard on the mouth. It had meant to be something of an understanding, that I knew how hungry he felt, but instead it turned wicked as I pulled him by the neck down onto me.

We raced to pull off each other’s pants, fumbling and breathless. Just when I was about to whine in frustration, his cock found my wet entrance. I expected him to go in rough and excited, but he held back; teasing me, running his length over my swollen lips until we were both panting.

He slid into me with one long stroke of his hips and muttered, “Holy mother of god.”

I licked the shell of his ear, “I didn’t peg you for religious.”

“I am right now. And I can make you religious too,” He said, looking down at me with an ornery grin, beginning to move.

He was right. Without my saying a word, he knew just what I needed. Our hips moved together primitively—need matching need. He cut off my string of divine, aimless mumbles with a searing kiss. I shut my eyes to feel everything. His strong muscles holding me close, the roughness of his tongue, the delicious stretch of my thigh muscles holding wide to bracket his hips. He pounded into me until I was gasping. Rutting had never done it for me before. I’d always had to snake a hand down to give myself motivation to come. But not now. I was being held on a ledge of feeling too much all the time.

“Please. Fuck,” I ground out.

He bit my neck hard. “You’re going to beg a lot more than that before I let you come, sweetheart.”

“Shut up,” I hissed, panting as he moved inside me. His mouth skimmed up my jaw to my lips.

Barely separated by a breath, he slammed into me. My legs tightened around his waist and my fingers gripped his biceps. There was something undeniable about being so close that I could see every fleck of light and dark brown in his eyes. 

He cursed aloud, “What’re you doing to me?”

“I thought you said I was going to be the one begging,” I mocked with a wry smile.

“Let’s see about that.”

Then he was hammering home and I was forgetting everything in the world outside of where we were conjoined. It felt too good. “I’m going to come,” I whined.

“Don’t you dare. Not yet,” he warned.

I whimpered against his mouth. He squeezed his eyes shut and bit the nape of my neck hard. The strain of avoiding climaxing was nearly painful. I hovered on that edge of feeling like I was going to die for so long that I almost thought I had.

He could sense me nearly rolling into my orgasm and ordered thickly, “Don’t you fucking come without me.”

“Can’t… hold on. Please… Ben.”

When every nerve in my body was at its breaking point, he commanded, “Now.”

And I did. Like an earthquake from the inside out, I shook in ecstasy. With a few shuddering thrusts, he filled me in jagged spurts accompanied by a groan. Exhausted, he collapsed on top of me.


End file.
